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Finding them had cost a lot of money—at least, it had seemed like a lot to a twenty-three-year-old still in his last year of law school. Obviously the women had been desperate to keep their location a secret, in case Ben decided to follow them and make good on his threat that, if Evelyn Watson didn’t live with him, she wouldn’t live at all.
Something Colby’s investigator did must have tipped Evelyn off, because when Colby got the information and tried to contact her a few weeks later, all three of them—Evelyn, Hayley and Genevieve—were gone. No notice at their little apartment or their jobs. No forwarding address.
He hadn’t tried again. He knew Hayley didn’t want to see him—not if she’d remained away, without so much as an email, for years. And if she didn’t want to see him, he wasn’t going to push himself back into her life.
Especially since the investigator had told him there was no sign of a child. Colby had tried to forget it—forget her. She’d probably been mistaken about the baby, done some wishful thinking and turned a late period into an imaginary pregnancy. He’d been just a few months shy of going to college, and she had been desperate at the thought of being left behind. It wouldn’t, he told himself, be the first time a clingy female had tried to will a baby into being, just to trap a man.
It made Colby cringe to remember the bullshit he’d try to sell himself.
“Did she seem surprised to see you?”
He looked up, and he saw Nana Lina’s gaze on him, sharp and probing.
“She didn’t show it, but of course she must have been. She kept it short and…” Sweet wasn’t really the right word, was it? “We exchanged only a very few words, and they weren’t particularly personal.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Let’s just say she doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve anymore.”
“Good.” His grandmother nodded, and he wondered what that tone was in her voice. It didn’t sound judgmental. It sounded…sad. Was it possible that she, like Colby, had found herself regretting what they did all those years ago? If she regretted what they’d said, what they’d done, she’d never showed it.
“Was she alone?”
Alone? For a minute, he could see Hayley standing there, in the wooded cemetery, with a storm building around her, and her dead father’s casket hovering just above the big rectangular hole. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone who looked more alone.
“Her mother wasn’t with her,” he said, deciding he’d just stick to the facts. “Neither was Genevieve.”
“No husband? No boyfriend?”
He shook his head. “No. No husband. No wedding ring. No—” He took a deep breath. “No family at all. At least, no one who had come to the cemetery with her.”
And he left it at that. But he knew that, as they sat there in silence, they were both thinking the same tangled thoughts.
No husband, no boyfriend.
And no sixteen-year-old total stranger, no nameless child with black hair and blue eyes who might, just might, have been Nana Lina’s unacknowledged great-grandson.
“THAT’S BEAUTIFUL, ELENA,” Hayley said, picking up the crayon drawing Roland’s granddaughter had made for her as they played and colored after dinner. “Is that me?”
Elena nodded somberly, and Hayley was glad she had interpreted it correctly. At four, the child’s art skills were still fairly primitive, but it seemed to be an illustration of a girl sleeping on the fragile tip-top branches of a tree. The stick figure, which stretched out rigidly across the branch, had bright yellow hair, and the tree’s leaves were made of circles so vigorously drawn they had left little green crayon shavings behind on the paper.
The four of them—Hayley, Elena, Roland and his wife, Miranda—had gathered in the front room of the little square adobe foreman’s house—well, what used to be the foreman’s house, back before her father started selling off the acreage. Now it was just Roland’s house.
Hayley smiled over at the serene-faced man, who sat in his straight-backed chair near the fireplace, watching quietly. “You must have made this tree story seem very romantic.”
“He made it seem a great deal too romantic,” Miranda said, with the rote sound of someone who had gone over this subject many times already. She had been gathering toys, and briskly tossed a bunny into a wicker basket. “When in fact climbing tall trees is quite dangerous, and if anyone I know ever tries it, she’ll be punished!”
Hayley glanced at Elena, whose eyes had grown large. “Your meemaw is right,” she said. “I wasn’t being smart. If I had fallen, I would have been hurt very badly.”
But could anyone have stopped her? She’d been about six when she fell in love with climbing the vineyard’s encircling trees. Maybe it was because, up high, she felt entirely disconnected from the misery inside her house. She imagined herself a fairy, with an acorn cap for a hat, bluebells for shoes and wings made of rainbows and wind. She was small enough to hide in the leafy branches, and sometimes she wouldn’t come down, even when she knew her mother was calling.
One day, when she was seven, her parents had a bigger fight than ever before, and she’d climbed higher than ever before. Fifteen feet up in the black oak tree, she fell asleep. According to Roland, the household was utter chaos as they looked for her—her mother frantic, her father furious, bellowing her name.
Roland was the one who had found her, sound asleep, luckily wedged between the huge trunk and the thick branch, her legs and arms dangling like pale pink tinsel. Though he had been nearly fifty, arthritic and tired from a long day in the vineyard, he’d climbed up and brought her down to safety.
The fight, she’d learned later, had been ignited by the news that her mother was unexpectedly pregnant again. After Genevieve was born, Hayley never climbed another tree. She still longed to escape, but one glimpse of the baby, and she knew she had to keep her feet on the ground, in case Genny needed her help.
She looked at Elena now, wondering if this little girl would also feel the need to find a private place, to pretend her life was different. Miranda had whispered earlier, as Hayley helped her prepare dinner, that Elena’s mother had run off a year ago, and probably wasn’t coming back.
It was hard for Hayley to comprehend that. She knew, of course, that not everyone wanted to be a mother. But this beautiful, fragile little girl…
It was so easy to damage a child like this. And so hard to make her whole again.
Her heart fluttered softly, as she thought if I had a child…
No. Not if. When. When she had a child, she would wrap him in so much love he could never break. She had a sudden image of the blue-striped wallpaper of the nursery she’d begun at home. And the five bright bluebirds that circled on the mobile above the crib. Only three more months now.
Three months, and the cradle that had been empty for so long would be filled.
She considered telling Roland and Miranda. They would be happy for her, even if they didn’t know the whole story, even if they could never understand how much this new baby would mean.
Her heartbeat sped up at the thought. Still, she wasn’t ready to share the news yet. She felt guarded, superstitious…haunted by the memory of the last time she’d had news like this to share. As if something terrible might happen if she spoke of it too soon.
They were all silent for a few minutes, listening to the crackle of the fire and the muted piano notes of Chopin on the sound system. Her heartbeat settled down—the magic of the Eliots working on her as it always had.
Hayley had spent many hours just like this when she was a child—back then, Genevieve would have been the toddler scribbling at the coffee table. By the time she was ten, Hayley had hoisted her fat, laughing baby sister onto her hip, and started coming here to the refuge of this little house, with the foreman who understood her better than her own father.
She’d given Genevieve as many hours of peace as she could. But she always had to go home again, eventually.
Just as she did tonight.
The only difference was that, tonight, her father would not be there. She wouldn’t have to wonder, as she entered the house, whether this was a good night or a bad one. Whether he was drunk or sober. Whether, when her mother turned around from the kitchen sink, she would be crying, or bleeding.
Banishing the image, Hayley stretched, shaking off the sleepiness caused by the plane ride, the time difference and the emotional day. The funeral had been harder than she’d expected. And seeing Colby…
No. She wouldn’t think about Colby. She put her hand softly on Elena’s dark curls, then stood up from the cushy leather sofa.
“I guess I should head back to the big house,” she said, trying not to sound ten years old again, and scared. “Miranda, the casserole was fantastic. Thank you so much for—”
She swallowed, suddenly unable to find the words to thank them for everything they’d done, not only tonight, but all those years ago.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t call,” she said in an abrupt switch of topic. “Or write. But Mom was always terrified. Always covering our tracks. She said any contact with our old lives would be fatal. She was so sure Dad would find us.”
Miranda came over and hugged her. “We knew,” she said. “Your mother wrote us once, just so that we wouldn’t fear for you. She didn’t tell us where you were going, merely that you had to leave. We understood, maybe better than anyone, why it was necessary. We knew your father.”
“Did he start looking for us right away? He never tried to contact us, but obviously his lawyer knew where we were.” For a long time, she’d wondered whether all the subterfuge, the fake names and the prepaid cell phones and the cash-only living, had been required. Somehow she couldn’t imagine her father staying sober long enough to launch a serious tracking campaign. Her mother had feared he would hire someone to find them, but Hayley had her doubts about that, too. She’d never known her father to turn loose of an extra penny for anyone but himself.
“I don’t think he looked for the first several years. Not until his first heart attack, I’d guess.” Roland rose, lifted Elena into his arms and came to stand near his wife, who still had her arm around Hayley’s waist. “I got the feeling he was afraid that, if your mother came back, she might press charges against him. She wouldn’t have, for herself, but for you…”
His gaze was gentle, but worried. She wondered how much he knew about that night, the night they disappeared. Someday, maybe, she’d tell him, but not tonight. She was so tired, and she still had to face that house.
Would it be better, she wondered, knowing that her father was in a casket, six feet underground, never to come storming through the doorway again? Or would that make it worse?
“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” As if she’d read her mind, Miranda squeezed her waist. “I can put some sheets on the sofa.”
When Hayley started to protest, Miranda laughed. “Really, it’s quite comfortable. Ask Roland. He’s out here half the time. We call it the doghouse.”
Elena giggled, then buried her face in Roland’s shirt self-consciously. Hayley couldn’t remember ever meeting a shyer child. But Elena’s laughter was adorable, and even its echo filled the room with a sense of light and optimism.
Hayley thanked Miranda, but firmly insisted that she wanted to stay at the big house. Roland offered to walk her back, but she turned that down, too. He’d already done everything he could to make the place welcoming. They’d put her bags there earlier, before dinner, and Roland had shown her around the downstairs, just as if she’d never seen the place before. That brief tour had been enough to let her know that he’d cleaned up a little bit, and added a few homey touches, as if he’d guessed she might plan to stay there, at least for a while.
A vase of blue hydrangeas on the kitchen table, a casserole and a big glass pitcher of fresh milk in the refrigerator. Even a book or two on the end table.
The Eliots’ sensitive presence permeated the place—or at least it had this afternoon. It had been light outside, then, the storm passed and sunshine streaming in through the windows. A playful wind had teased the fluffy, October-brown heads of the grapevines.
But she’d lingered so long, coloring with Elena, that it was full night now. She shot a glance out the front window, where the silhouettes of trees moved darkly against the silvery sky, and thought of the still, empty rooms waiting for her.
She shook the feeling away. Dark or light, it was just a house. She would be fine.
The Eliots stood on the front porch and watched her walk up through the vineyard. She turned at the last minute, before the dip in the land would obscure the view, and waved merrily. She was fine. They waved back, and she thought she heard Elena call her name.
She waved again. She was fine.
Then she turned back toward the large, two-story adobe house, with its orange-tile roof and arched colonnades extending to either side like outstretched arms. Roland must have put some lights on timers, because several of the windows glowed, long rectangles of amber illumination that should have looked welcoming, but instead just looked unnatural, knowing, as she did, that no one was inside.
Weeds grew up at the edge of the rows of vines, making the path uneven. She kept her eyes on the ground and kept going, glad for a reason to ignore the strange tricks the moonlight played with the wire supports. In her peripheral vision, the metal winked randomly, giving the illusion that something moved among the leaves.
Ridiculous. She was fine. No matter how haunted the place might feel, she didn’t believe in ghosts. And even if she had believed, she wouldn’t give her father’s ghost the satisfaction of driving her out of the house again. He was gone. He had not found her, or Genevieve. Even her mother had died in peace. They had all officially survived him.
So that meant she was the one with the power now. She would sell his house, and his vines, and go back to Florida. She would never, ever think of him again. He would rot here, unloved and unmourned.
Hey, Dad, she thought, gathering her courage into one bitter burst of defiance as she neared the house. I’ll give you something to be afraid of.
But just as she put her foot on the first step of the porch stairs, a large, man-shaped form disengaged from the arches of the western colonnade. She froze in place, her hand foolishly at her throat.
Oddly, her first thought was—could it be Greg?
But that was silly. Why would Greg follow her here, all the way from Florida? He was a doctor. He was busy. People depended on him. Even though his behavior during their break-up had given her a mild case of the creeps, he wasn’t a fool. He wouldn’t chase after a woman who had already made it painfully clear that they were through.
“I’m sorry to come so late,” the man said politely. He continued to move forward, his steps silent on the tiled floor, until he emerged from the shadows. Moonbeams silvered one side of his face.
The light only confirmed what she already knew, from those few syllables of his husky voice. The man who waited here in the darkness wasn’t a ghost, and he wasn’t Greg.
Once again, she had come face-to-face with Colby Malone.
CHAPTER THREE
“I’M SORRY,” he repeated carefully, trying to give her time to adjust. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I wasn’t frightened,” she said.
But he knew that was a lie. Her face was white. She would naturally be twitchy, coming back here after so long, especially under these circumstances. And no woman alone in an isolated spot could possibly enjoy seeing a stranger emerge from the shadows.
Weird, thinking of himself as a “stranger.” But no other word applied anymore. Back when they were teenagers, he’d waited for her so many times, right in this very spot. Once, her face would have lit up to see him, and she would have leaped into his arms, their two bodies stumbling back into the shadows with urgent kisses but no words, so that no one inside the house would hear.
Now, she froze at the sound of his voice, as guarded as a doe confronted by the barrel of a rifle.
“What do you want?”
Okay. He hadn’t expected a warm welcome, and apparently he wasn’t going to get one.
“I know it’s late, and you must be tired. I was going to wait until tomorrow, to give you time to settle in. But—”
Her face remained impassive. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk. I hoped we could talk.”
“Wouldn’t the phone have been better?”
He tilted his head, appraising this pale, collected woman who bore only the most superficial resemblance to the girl he used to know. She still had on the gray flared skirt and short jacket she’d worn to the funeral, but it didn’t look rumpled even after all these hours. The Hayley he used to know was always dressed in bright colors, always dashing about, her pink cheeks looking slightly fevered, her golden hair flyaway and fabulous.
“I would have been glad to call,” he said reasonably. “Except, I don’t know your number, remember? If you left Sonoma tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t have any idea how to find you again. I don’t even know what name you answer to these days.”
That wasn’t an exaggeration. He knew what name her mother had been using when his investigator found her, a dozen or so years ago. But she’d moved again after that, and the second time he tried to find her, about six months ago, no one of that name existed.
Bottom line was, he didn’t know anything, not one single solitary thing, about her anymore. He hadn’t even been a hundred percent sure she was staying here at the vineyard house, until he’d seen the car with rental plates in the front drive.
Leaving the cemetery after her brush-off today hadn’t been easy. The gossip among the other locals attending the service had been that Hayley would be staying in town, at least long enough to settle up her father’s affairs. But who knew if that was really true? Who knew whether Hayley Watson might decide to disappear into the night all over again?
“Colby,” she began, then stopped. She folded her arms, tucking her hands under them, as if the night air had chilled her fingers. “I don’t want to be rude, but I really don’t think we have anything to talk about, do we? As you said, it’s been a very long time. We are both different people now, and the past— Well, it just isn’t very relevant anymore.”
He heard the dismissal in her voice. His pride bucked once, trying to throw him, trying to compel him to walk away. The past was dead to her? Irrelevant? Okay, fine. She meant nothing to him, either.
He choked off the inner voice. That was just the huffy and stupidly proud teenager inside him talking. He was disappointed to discover that, after all these years, remnants of that self-centered jackass still remained.
“Hayley,” he said, working hard to avoid sounding pushy or entitled. “I understand that you may well have nothing to say to me. But I have something I’d like to say to you.”
She wasn’t going for it. He could tell by the way her full lips tightened. “Colby, I—”
“Please,” he said. It wasn’t a word she—or anyone else—had often heard him utter. “I’ve owed you an apology for seventeen years, and I don’t want to lose this chance to make it now.”
She clearly hadn’t been expecting that. Her arms fell to her sides, as if suddenly limp with surprise. Her gaze scanned his face—though he had no idea what she searched for.
Finally she nodded. “All right,” she said. “I’m listening.”
He glanced at her lightweight suit—a sign that wherever she lived probably didn’t have the chilly nights of Northern California. “You look cold. May I come in?”
“No.”
He had to laugh at little at that. “You aren’t planning to make this easy for me, are you?”
She smiled, too, but it was cool and unamused. “I’m not planning to make it difficult for you, if that’s what you’re implying. But neither do I see why it’s my responsibility to make it easy. I didn’t ask for an apology. I don’t require one, and I don’t think you owe me one. As I said, I believe it’s all ancient history, and best left alone. You’re the one who seems to feel it’s important.”
